What is Hidden (19 page)

“The pleasure is mine,” she insisted, and though I half expected her to take an unflattering sort of pleasure in my horrible lack of grace, she seemed genuinely pleased to meet me. “Any friend of my lord’s is a friend of mine.”

I cast a sidelong glance at Aiden, who seemed vaguely uncomfortable with the repeated address of “my lord.” I wondered if they’d ever been on a first-name basis. It was odd to hear him be called anything but simply Aiden.

“Would you like to join me for some refreshment?” she asked, gesturing toward what I assumed was a small dining area. “We just received a shipment of lemons that the girls are playing around with in the kitchen. They produced some delicious treats that I’m sure you’d love.”

“We’d be delighted,” he said, and I trailed behind him as Arianna led the way.

The room was indeed a dining area, with small tables for groups of twos or threes scattered across the floor. It was just as bright in here, though the walls were covered with more paintings than mirrors. One wall was covered exclusively with a bright mural of the oceanside. I was mesmerized by the beautiful strokes that turned into waves of blues and grays crashing along the rocks. I could smell the clean saltiness of the ocean and block out the musk of the canals just by looking at this painting.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Arianna addressed me, taking me by surprise. I had assumed she would pay attention to only Aiden, because he was her contact.

“Yes, it is. It takes me right back to the shore,” I admitted.

“I wish I could say I’d had a hand in creating that”—she gestured at the wall—“but my painting isn’t quite that good. Another girl painted it. She’s incredibly skilled. As she should be, I suppose. Painting is her specialty. All of the residents here had a part in creating this mural, but she was the main hand and designer. I was relegated to the clouds,” she said ruefully.

I looked at the clouds then. They were nothing to draw attention, neither good nor bad. “Clouds are ridiculous,” Arianna said. “It’s what we practice shading on. It was like having me do the punctuation at the end of a sentence.” She laughed. “But that’s all right. I best her every time at debate.”

I couldn’t help but laugh with her. She had that infectious giggle, the kind that drew people in around her and instantly cheered them.

“But that’s more than enough about me. Tell me about you!” she insisted, seating us at a circular table near a window before sitting herself. “I’ve never seen my lord with a girl on his arm of his own free will.” She glanced at him slyly. “I thought he left that part up to his father.”

Aiden groaned. “Just leave that alone, will you? I think you’ve given me enough grief over that to last me a lifetime.”

She giggled again and consented, again prodding me for information about myself. “Do you live in the palace too? I’ve never seen you before.”

“I do live there,” I admitted, though omitted my occupation. Even if it was just a cover, it felt shameful to admit I was a serving mistress in front of this fine lady. “Just recently, though.”

She seemed to sense my hesitation and didn’t prod me more on the subject. “How did you two meet, then? Did his father try to set you up too?”

Aiden snorted, and said, “Not at all. We met under completely different circumstances.”

I smiled at the memory and sat back to let Aiden tell Arianna the story. It was a fond memory for me, and one story I loved to hear Aiden tell—often because it was different every time, and I got to correct him.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” he began teasingly.

“It was not,” I said, laughing. “It was a perfectly lovely spring evening.”

“Are you telling the story, or am I?”

“It depends on if you’re going to tell it right,” I said.

“I’m insulted that you suggest I’d do anything but!” he said, mockingly aghast.

“Right,” I said sarcastically.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “it was a perfectly lovely spring evening.” He waited for me to interrupt again, but I smiled innocently at him. Shaking his head, he continued as Arianna watched us with an amused expression. “And I was on an errand in the Green District, where Evie here happened to be as well.

“I was in a hurry, because I had a lot of things to do that night and some people my father needed me to meet, so I tried to take what I thought was a shortcut.”

“Shortcuts are never short,” I interjected, smiling fondly.

“Especially when you’re the scenery,” he shot back. “But yes, as you can guess, I lost my way.”

“Which is really ridiculous, when you think about it,” I interrupted again. “All he had to do was find a canal and tell the driver where he needed to go and odds are the driver would know exactly where to take him.”

“Which is what I did,” he tried to defend himself.

“Only after wandering around until it was dark and you’d followed me home, trying to pluck up the nerve to ask directions!”

Arianna laughed gleefully with me, and Aiden couldn’t keep up his affronted façade.

“So Evie had pity on me and gave me proper directions. The next day I returned to thank her, and she became my go-to for any information about that District. And then I just kept coming back,” he said, looking at me fondly.

“Like a stray cat,” I teased. “I show you a little kindness and then can’t get rid of you.”

They both laughed, and I belatedly realized something he had said—I was his informant in my district? I’d never thought of myself like that, though it was clearly true. That explained his curiosity.

“How did you come to be knowledgeable about that district?” Arianna asked me.

“I lived there most of my life,” I admitted. No shame in admitting my masking heritage to her. And Lacies were renowned for their secret-keeping abilities. I wouldn’t have to worry about her blowing my cover. “My family was in the masking business.”

“Ohh,” she exclaimed. “I envy you that. I’ve tried my hand at trimming, and it can be tricky work. The material never did what I wanted it to do. And my workstation always became such a mess.”

I laughed, proud that I was able to do something she could not. “It takes a long time to learn and even longer to master,” I said modestly. “And I’m still very much in the learning process.”

“I’d love to see some of your work some time,” she said.

I hesitated before saying, “I wish I could show you. A recent fire destroyed most of my current work, and I don’t have anything to show.”

“Oh, that’s awful!” She was also an artisan of sorts, and I was sure she’d felt the pain of losing a piece of work. Artisans put pieces of themselves in everything they did, and to lose a product was to lose a part of themselves.

“I hate to interrupt, but we have some business to take care of,” Aiden said, looking truly like he did hate to interrupt. I also think he was getting a kick out of watching me talk with Arianna. He didn’t see me socialize or talk with girls pretty much ever, so I’m sure this was a different side of me he was seeing. I was curious to see what he made of it. I made a mental note to ask him about it on the return trip.

“Of course,” Arianna said. “Let me fetch the treats and then we can begin. It wouldn’t do to simply sit here without any sort of refreshment—they’d kick me out on the streets,” she joked. At least, I think she was only joking. These places were infamously strict, so for all I knew, she was serious.

Aiden and I sat in comfortable silence, waiting for her return. I was lost in my thoughts of my life since I’d met Aiden, and he was no doubt lost in his own thoughts. Probably not of me, though.

Arianna returned with a tray filled with bright yellow squares, sprinkled with sugar. The mere sight of them made my taste buds sing. She also carried a silver pitcher of juice and three small cups and matching miniature plates.

Setting everything down, and quickly serving each of us, she made herself comfortable and began to speak.

B
efore giving us any information,
Arianna clearly wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to reveal more than Aiden wanted me to know. She seemed a little hesitant, and Aiden read her hesitations correctly.

“Anything you think will be useful for me to know, Evie can also know,” he said. “And she’s caught up on what I know. Mostly. I can fill in any blanks as we talk.”

That seemed to put Arianna at ease. “That makes things easier, then. No tiptoeing around what’s need to know and what’s something I just picked up.”

Aiden nodded. “Let’s start with the need to know.”

“I assume you’ve already realized the man they think they’ve caught is a fake?”

I shot Aiden a look. Clearly
someone
had already spoken to her about the purpose of our visit. He held his hands out innocently, then dropped the façade and grinned. I sighed and shook my head, then asked Arianna, “Why do you say that?”

“Well,” she said, “it’s not really common knowledge yet, but the man had a close friend who knew his face and says she can vouch for him. It seems he was framed.”

Aiden looked shocked. “We can’t even trust the Marks now?”

She shook her head, then continued. “The newest rumor surrounding this Chameleon is that he might not even actually be a ‘he’”—she looked at me pointedly—“if you understand what I mean.”

“The Chameleon is a woman?” Aiden sounded incredulous.

“There’s no way,” I protested. I’d seen him with my own eyes. He was definitely a man. “What on earth started that rumor?”

“Apparently before the fire yesterday, there was a new girl in the market setting up shop the next District over. You know how close knit those people are—any stranger is going to stand out. They said she kept to herself and set up a shop full of mask trimmings, simple things that folks could do themselves.

“Several people tried to talk to her, but she would answer with only a yes or no, or one-word answers.”

“What connection is she to the Chameleon, then? It’s not that strange to have a newcomer. Uncommon, maybe, but not cause for suspicion.”

“True, but when she is gone the very next day without a trace?” Arianna said. “That is definitely more cause for suspicion.”

“Why even bother setting up a shop at all?” Aiden asked. “Why not just keep hidden during the day?”

Arianna shrugged her slim shoulders. “Your guess is as good as anyone’s. We’re thinking that she wanted to get a feel for her targets, so she could imitate them after stealing their masks.”

“That could be done just as easily without being so conspicuous.” Aiden wasn’t convinced, and neither was I.

“No, I think she wanted to be seen. I think the original wanted to confuse anyone who was pursuing him. Now we’ll be looking for someone who may be either male or female? He’s widening the list of possible suspects,” I said.

“Hmm.” Aiden drummed his fingers on the table as he thought that over. “I don’t think we can rule anything else out right now. And your source is reliable?”

“Extremely,” Arianna assured him. Her word seemed to be good enough for him, and it would have to be good enough for me too.

“What else did you find out?“

“That’s the only big development. I still don’t think I’ve heard anything useful in my usual circles,” she told us sadly. “But no one particularly notable has gone missing or has unaccountable gaps of time where they could be off leading this double life. So I think it’s either a foreigner or someone from the lower class.”

“I would guess a foreigner,” I murmured, trying to recall if I’d detected any sort of accent when he’d attacked me. In the haze of panic, I’d noticed nothing particularly outstanding. “A foreigner wouldn’t have any qualms about imitating others by stealing masks.”

“True,” Aiden agreed thoughtfully.

Our country was unique in its mask system. It wasn’t so far fetched to believe that someone from the outerlands, where they went bare-faced, would come in and make a mess of things to stir up controversy in our society. They considered us imposters or proud pretenders, and we considered them naked savages.

“But things have been calm around the borders,” Arianna argued. “It would have to be some kind of personal grudge.”

“Can you think of anyone who’s personally offended outsiders recently? Or rather,” I rephrased my question to a better one, “any connection between the victims that would have angered an outsider to the point of acting like this?”

Shaking her head, Arianna replied, “We’ve thought of that too, looking for some kind of connection. We haven’t been able to find one yet, but we’re still looking.”

I realized she was taking something for granted, something that Aiden already knew. “I know this might seem a stupid question, but who is ‘we,’ if you don’t mind my asking?”

Arianna smiled gently. “Of course, it’s an obvious question for you to ask. I should have said earlier. I would have, but Aiden already knows of course, and it’s just second nature for me to speak for all of us.

“When I refer to ‘we’ I mean myself and the other Lacies. Aiden is not the only one who likes information, and he’s not the only one who will pay for it.” She grinned flirtatiously in his direction. “He is, however, one of my more preferred clients.”